This project was 7 months of 10-20 hour nonstop work. It is a fully realized production that was meant to feel like an enhanced version of Super Mario World. Doing something like this requires more than a heart of gold and a frying mind to back it up. I'm sure the community understands this very well.

I thank the charitable people who took the time to release their documents, items, and scrap data. Cheers and see you in the next life.

Visit the site for download and everything else:http://www.mewgynewgy.com/freedomn/index.html

Game Data

+ or - 50 new enemies

All new Mario themed Bosses through the ages.

55 song original soundtrack with a few cover songs, all newly composed and mixed by myself.

Your website is awesome,I wish I could download this Hack.I love this Hack. And the website. You really made a wonderful Hack and Website. I didn't played it, but I read the complete Website(about SMW Freedom). And I can point out,that this Hack is legendary. Especially the new Characters and the wonderful music. And also the maps are wonderful created. The Tips,the items and the controll would be very useful to this site. But what is the story of the Hack? I would be so happy, if I could watch a video of this Hack. It should be LP'd. And if you upload it on SMWC and it won't get featured I WILL go inactive.

At long last, the English speaking world has a hack which can stand alongside sMW YEAHH, Scarlet Devil Mario and Mario :p:p:p in ASM and gimmick quality. We've now thanks to the work of Micheal Nguyen got a choconilla type gimmick hack that can rival many of the Japanese ones for custom bosses, sprites and clever gimmicks. Never the less, here's a review of what could be one of the defining hacks of the generation.

Graphics

They're a mix of vanilla Super Mario World graphics and entirely custom drawn sprite, boss and foreground ones made by the author. Usually the customness is pretty subtle (very much like how SMW YEAHH made its graphics fit into the default style for the most part)

Never the less, the foregrounds are simple but effective, as are what custom backgrounds do happen to exist (this hack tends to keep vanilla backgrounds for whatever reason). The sprite graphics on the other hand are much better, they're of a style completely unlike the default and just bristling with creativity and personal touches. They're also in what looks like a cross between an anime style and that found in the old Mario Kart adverts, and they also have a few resemblances to the type of graphics found in Wario Land The Shake Dimension.

But it's not perfect unfortunately. Why? Because the hack creator didn't redraw everything, and hence there are quite a few inconsistencies between his fancy custom style and the drab, boring stylings of vanilla Super Mario World GFX. It also causes problems with scale, since vanilla sprites are usually 16 x 16 while this hack's custom sprites (of which there are many) are closer to 32 x 32 pixels in size or larger. As a result, the water bug and NSMB spider enemies in this game look absolutely massive in comparison to the normal enemies around them, as do the custom bosses and the late game edited Hammer Bros.

Never the less, it's good, but would have scored full marks if all the graphics in the game were redrawn to match a single consistent style.

8/10

Music

Decent. It fits the levels in general, but it really doesn't stand out as too memorable, and feels a bit chiptune like due to non use of samples or modern custom music.

A review site would probably class it as elevator music, or functional but not particularly outstanding. Not that it's too bad a thing, many people said the same about Wario Land Shake It's music and that game had some pretty good background themes.

7/10

Creativity, Custom elements

Now this is where the game shines. You know where on the official site the maker says there are hundreds of new enemies? He is not kidding. In fact, to some degree, the hack even seems to have its own versions of custom sprites you can find online, since the Bullies and Rocky Wrenches for example act completely differently to the common ones by Romi and SMKdan. This reminds me a lot of Brutal Mario and how carol made his own Bumpty and Ptooie sprites, and while it's not a bad thing, you can definitely tell the versions in this hack are rough around the edges.

But the enemies that are new and original are great. You've got the Scuttlebugs from New Super Mario Bros, the Skeeters from the same game and even Hammer Bros which throw multiple hammers at once. You've got stationary and moving Blockhoppers. You even have what seem to be Mario and Luigi style Anubis enemies in Bowser's Castle, and those helicopter type creatures from Super Mario Galaxy 2, which come in their own different coloured variants. It's very impressive, and reminds me a lot of how SMW YEAHH introduced Koopa Elites and psycho Rexes, or how Brutal Mario introduced all those Seiken Densetsu 3 enemies in the last few levels. The custom enemies here though go beyond both of those, there are more new gimmick sprites in this game than even what you can find in Brutal Mario, which is extremely impressive.

Where it really begins to shine though, are the bosses. They are interesting. Not dull one attack bosses like those in Super Mario TKO and Super Mario Bros 3X. Not slow paced, boring bosses like in Brutal Mario and Scarlet Devil Mario, which take about twenty minutes to defeat and are entirely based on preset patterns. No, these bosses are both original and varied enough to be fun to defeat. Some of the highlights are:

Bowser Jr, based off his New Super Mario Bros form. However, the shells he throws seem a bit weird, like they're not really shells and hence don't stop when you jump on them. Might want to change that.

Petey Piranha (there's a New Super Mario Bros obsession in this game, and considering how overused SNES era stuff is, that's for the better). He flies up and down shooting at you, and even when he's down fires fireballs and such like.

Wario. He becomes Wario Man part way through the fight, which is a nice touch.

And not to mention, the later bosses, which include Kamella, Giga Bowser and the Shadow Queen/possessed Peach.

However, there is one use of SMW Bowser which doesn't fit in, and probably should be changed to a custom boss.

Outside of sprites, the selection of blocks seems decent enough, but I'll withhold judgement due to the fact I can't really tell which ones, if any the creator coded himself.

In conclusion thereforth, the creativity and sprites get 10/10, for being good enough to give me hope in SMW Central and the English community.

Overworld

Pretty good. It's better than Brutal Mario's vanilla version overworld, and it's never bland or empty, but it's not particularly over the top fancy either (with only one section having custom graphics). This is a bit disappointing if you ask me, the author could definitely have drawn some brilliant overworld graphics if he put the work into that.

But it's still good.

8/10

Gameplay/Fun

Perfect. It is honestly one of the few fancy hacks I know which has both good level design and good ASM, something which I originally thought to be impossible. I always enjoyed each of the levels and seeing what interesting themes came next, and I definitely enjoyed seeing what custom sprite or enemy what suddenly appear and change the feel of the level.

On that note, the bosses in this game were actually fun to fight. I already said they're well designed, but to any boss creators, you need to take notes from this game. Never once did a boss feel like it was getting repetitive (*cough* carol *cough*), nor did it feel like it was over too quickly (*cough* most English boss coders *cough*).

However, a few minor criticisms which don't really affect the rating. First off, I thought the secret world was kind of lousy. The levels were fun, but you didn't really get anything, just the Green Switch Palace. My advice is to move the palace somewhere else and instead put a bonus castle level there like the VIP series and the SMW Central collab did. With a fancy custom boss like Tanasinn or Megadmin. Seeing as you're good at boss making, this should be easy, and it should be even easier to delve into Mario history and make your own version of another RPG villain.

Secondly, the ending doesn't seem to activate. Not sure if I missed something, but I beat all three wings of the final castle and not one activated an ending of any kind. That should probably be changed, it's always nice to know exactly when you've truly beaten the game.

Still, as it's a fun game which doesn't do a whole lot wrong, it gets a perfect rating.

10/10

Conclusion

This is an excellent hack, and one which hopefully won't be overlooked as many other good hacks have been in the past. It's also the exact type of hack raocow would love to play, as well as the type of one SMW Central would probably have featured in the past.

Cool hack, played up to Calientwo so far. The custom bosses are awesome, the music... I didn't like it too much at first, but it's growing on me, and the remixes are just awesome. The level design is really fun as well. Great job!

Also an entire freakin' site for one hack seems to be overdoing it a bit...

Bowser Jr, based off his New Super Mario Bros form. However, the shells he throws seem a bit weird, like they're not really shells and hence don't stop when you jump on them. Might want to change that.

Even though they don't stop, you can still pick them up and throw them at him.

Anyway, nice hack, dude. Finished the first two worlds, and it looks great.

There wasnt really a need to link that, mainly as the creator could give the best reason on how to get the secret. Also Im sure GS15 knows about that thread.

Anywho, Ive being playing it more and more and I gotta say the new sprites are pretty nifty. Are you going to release them later on? I only say this as I think it would add more vairety to some of the sites used on the site.

At long last, the English speaking world has a hack which can stand alongside sMW YEAHH, Scarlet Devil Mario and Mario :p:p:p in ASM and gimmick quality. We've now thanks to the work of Micheal Nguyen got a choconilla type gimmick hack that can rival many of the Japanese ones for custom bosses, sprites and clever gimmicks.

I disagree wholeheartedly, and I am utterly baffled at why you even attempted to compare this to them. This hack plays nothing like those, nor do any of the levels in the first five worlds (currently at Paradise Woods) have anything I'd call "Japanese" in terms of "ASM/gimmick" quality.

Rather, I feel this hack stands on its own as exactly what the creator intended it to be in his first post:

They just have fun, good old gameplay with the odd custom enemy here and there (which no level is actually built around - rather, they're simply thrown in). The Japanese tend to build entire levels around full-on gimmicks (i.e. arbitrarily changing your controls around, throwing in a bunch of goal sphere traps, etc.) I have yet to see anything like that in this hack.

As for a little review...

One thing I find this particular hack author does quite well (I'll henceforth refer to him as "you") is that your levels are in a consistent style. I wouldn't say they rival SMW in terms of being "standard", but they each have their own unique feeling to them. I can't really think of a level thus far that stands out as better than the rest, as they all seem to be about on par with one another.

Aesthetics .. well, I'm not overly fond of your music or graphics. I do feel that they do their job well, and I suppose that's what really matters here, but some of the music is quite dissonant and some of the graphics are just messy. In places where you attempt to combine SMW's graphics with your hand-drawn stuff (i.e. the ghost house in the fourth world), yours kind of stick out like a sore thumb. There are other instances of this as well, such as when you use your own Koopas with SMW's.

As for the custom enemies/bosses that were talked up in this thread .. they're not bad. The bosses themselves are simplistic, but not overwhelming in terms of difficulty and/or stupidity. Once again, they're nothing to write home about at all, but they certainly do their job well.

All in all, although I'd say your graphics/music/ASM-related stuff is mediocre, your actual gameplay is great, and frankly, that's what matters to me at this point. It's a fun romp that I'm sure others will enjoy as well.

I disagree wholeheartedly, and I am utterly baffled at why you even attempted to compare this to them. This hack plays nothing like those, nor do any of the levels in the first five worlds (currently at Paradise Woods) have anything I'd call "Japanese" in terms of "ASM/gimmick" quality.

Okay, you're right, this hack is much better than those Japanese ones. I might as well just say 'I liked the gimmicks and bosses'. Basically, I think it's nice a English hack exists which shows off awesome custom stuff as well as good level design.

Also, you're at world 5. You might like the final world's bosses more. Just keep in mind the final castle has three different paths and bosses.